Consumer Guide Album

The Beat: Go-Go's Fusion of Funk and Hip Hop [Liaison, 2001]
With all protestations of American optimism sounding false and forced, I woke up one day with a yen for Chuck Brown's "Bustin' Loose" and didn't-stop-no-I-didn't-stop playing this definitive genre comp for two hours. Like most dance music, it's a little long-winded for home use; like most two-CD sets, it gets less definitive as it goes along. It merely documents and celebrates a local movement by a nationally disenfranchised audience that was utterly undaunted by their music's failure to take over the world 15 years ago. Without ever truly busting loose, go-go remained an autonomous realm of freedom--an option ripe for exploration by any other audience with the will to make it so. A-